Chapter 1: The night my wolf never came

Everyone in the Ashen Creek Pack was watching me wait for a wolf that was never going to come.

I stood in the middle of the gathering ring with the full moon above my head and the bonfire burning at my back, wearing the white dress I had sewn myself over three nights. It was my eighteenth birthday, and in our pack that meant one thing. At midnight, every wolf wakes up inside the girl or boy it belongs to, and the whole pack gathers to welcome them.

Selene's wolf had come four months ago, the day she turned eighteen. They had thrown her a feast that lasted two days. For mine, they only brought a small fire and a few cold looks, and I had baked my own cake, which no one had touched.

"Breathe, Liana," my father said quietly from beside the elders. He would not look at me when he said it, and I noticed that, but I told myself he was only nervous.

I breathed. I closed my eyes and pressed a hand to my chest the way I had practiced for months, and I waited for the pull, the heat, the howl that every wolf in this pack had described to me my whole life. I waited so hard that my fingers shook.

The moon climbed to the top of the sky, and the elder lifted his hand to mark midnight.

Nothing happened.

I felt the same ache I always felt, the same empty space where a wolf should have been, and a low murmur began to spread around the ring like smoke. I heard someone whisper, "Wolfless," and then someone else laughed.

"Give her a minute," a woman said, but even her voice sounded tired.

I gave myself a minute. Then I gave myself another, and the elder dropped his hand and cleared his throat, and I understood that it was over before anyone said it. My wolf was not late. She was not coming at all.

My face burned, but I kept my chin up, because the one thing the Hale family had never been able to take from me was the way I stood. My mother had taught me that before she died, when I was seven, and I held on to it now like a rope.

"Well," said a voice I had known since I was a child. "At least we can stop pretending."

Rhett Cole stepped out of the crowd with his hands in his pockets and his jaw set in that proud way he had been practicing since he was twelve. He was the Alpha's son, the boy who had been promised to me when we were both small, and I had loved him with the foolish kind of love that grows when nobody else offers you any. Two nights ago he had held my hand behind the barn and told me it did not matter if my wolf never came. He had said he would stand by me.

I smiled at him, because I still believed it.

He did not smile back.

"Liana," he said, loud enough for the whole pack to hear. "I will not make a wolfless girl the Luna of Ashen Creek."

The ring went silent.

"I know what we promised as kids," he went on, and he looked past me, at the crowd, not at me, as if I was only the thing standing in the way. "But our pack needs a strong Luna, and everyone here knows you cannot be one. So in front of all of them, I, Rhett Cole, future Alpha of Ashen Creek, reject you as my chosen mate."

It is strange what the body does when a person breaks your heart in public. I did not cry, and I did not fall. I just felt very cold, as if all the heat from the bonfire had decided to leave me alone with him. The rejection did not even hurt the way it hurts other wolves, because I had no wolf to feel it, and somehow that made it worse. There was no pain to blame. There was only me, standing there, fully awake and fully humiliated.

"You said you would stand by me," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I expected.

"I said a lot of things." Rhett finally looked at me, and I saw that he was not even sorry. He was relieved. "Be honest with yourself, Liana. You are not enough for this pack."

Then he reached out his hand, and Selene stepped forward to take it.

My half sister wore a pale blue dress and a small, sad smile, the same smile she used whenever she wanted adults to think she was kind. She slid her fingers through his as if they had done it a hundred times, and I realized, with a slow drop in my stomach, that they probably had.

"I am so sorry, Liana," Selene said softly. "We never wanted you to find out like this."

Behind her, my stepmother Vera pressed a hand to her chest as if she was overcome with pity. She was not. I saw the corner of her mouth lift for just one second, and it was the look of a woman who had won something she had been waiting a long time for.

I turned to my father.

Marcus Hale was my last hope in that ring, and I think a part of me knew it. He was the one who used to carry me on his shoulders when my mother was alive. He was the one who had taught me to bake bread. If anyone was going to say stop, it would be him.

He stared at the ground.

"Papa," I said.

He did not look up.

"Papa, please."

I had promised myself I would never beg anyone for anything, and there I was, saying please in front of the whole pack, and it did not even earn me a glance. Something inside me broke quietly then, much more quietly than the rejection had.

"Take her out," Vera said calmly, and two guards stepped forward. "She has embarrassed this family enough for one night."

"I can walk," I said.

I put the cake knife I had been holding down on the table, very carefully, as if my hands were not shaking, and I walked out of the ring on my own two feet. Every pair of eyes followed me. Nobody stopped me, and nobody said my name. When I passed the edge of the firelight, I heard the music start again behind me, and the pack went back to celebrating, this time for Rhett and Selene.

I made it all the way to the old stone path at the edge of the forest before my knees gave out.

The night was quiet there, and the cold crept through my thin white dress. I sat down in the dirt and pressed my fist against my mouth so that no one would hear me, and for the first time all night, I cried. I cried for my mother, and for the girl who had believed a boy's promise behind a barn, and for the wolf I had waited eighteen years for.

"I did everything right," I whispered into the dark. "So why am I the one who is not enough?"

No one answered, of course.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand and tried to stand, and that was when it happened.

A warmth bloomed in the center of my chest, small at first, like a single coal catching fire. It was not painful, but it was strong enough to make me stop breathing. The forest around me seemed to go very still, as if every leaf was holding its breath, and the moonlight on the path turned a pale, silver white.

Something inside me, something I had been told for eighteen years did not exist, moved.

And in a voice that was not mine, soft as snow and older than the moon itself, it whispered my name.

"Liana."